Thursday, June 12, 2014

Who's broke? Not former presidents, thanks to taxpayers -- June 12, 2014 column

By
MARSHA MERCER

After he
left the White House in 1953, former President Harry Truman complained that it
cost $30,000 a year out of his own pocket to reply to all his mail and requests
for speeches.

In those
days, former presidents received a fond farewell but no federal pension, and
speech-making wasn’t the gold mine it is today.

Congress
had authorized pensions for retired federal workers and members of Congress
(surprise!) but it had not approved federal aid for ex-presidents.

In 1912,
industrialist Andrew Carnegie offered to pay former presidents $25,000 a year
from the Carnegie Foundation of New York. Fortunately, that idea didn’t sit
well with Congress or citizens. Imagine where we’d be if our presidents knew
they’d be beholden to one outside group in their later years.

William Howard Taft, the only former president eligible,
declined Carnegie’s offer. In his post-presidency, Taft was a law professor at Yale
and became chief justice.

Truman’s
financial woes finally led to the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which aimed to
“maintain the dignity” of the presidency by providing pensions and benefits so
former presidents wouldn’t have to take unsuitable employment, according to the
nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Today,
besides an annual pension of $201,700, each former president gets funds for
travel, office space, support staff and mailing privileges, Secret Service
protection and other benefits.

“No
current former president has claimed publically to have significant financial
concerns,” Wendy Ginsberg wrote in “Former Presidents: Pensions, Office
Allowances, and Other Federal Benefits,” issued this past April. Ginsberg,
American national government analyst at CRS, wrote the 2014 and 2008 reports on
presidential pensions.

Then along
came Hillary Clinton. The likely 2016 presidential contender insisted the other
day that she and her husband were “not only dead broke, but in debt” when they
left the White House in January 2001.

“We had no money when we got there and we
struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses,
for Chelsea’s education. You know it was not easy,” she told Diane Sawyer of ABC
News.

The Clintons
have reportedly made vast sums talking since they left the White House: $5
million for Hillary Clinton’s speeches and more than $100 million for former President
Bill Clinton’s.

“He's worked very hard, first of all, we
had to pay off all our debts which was, you know, we had to make double the
money because of obviously taxes…and get us houses and take care of family
members,” Clinton said.

Her
critics rightly pounced on her comments as tone deaf. But she is merely the latest presidential
hopeful who inhabits a far different world than most voters. Most Americans struggle to pay their rent or mortgage – not to
buy two multimillion-dollar mansions.

Clinton tried
to “clarify” that she knows “how hard life is for so many people today.” That’s
comforting.

She frequently
says things “need to be put into context,” so let’s put “broke” into context.

Her financial
disclosure forms, filed in 2000, show assets between $781,000 and almost $1.8
million, according to the Associated Press, which also reported between $2.3
million and $10.6 million in legal bills.

Still, the
Clintons’ finances were hardly bleak. In December 2000, the month before they left
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Hillary Clinton signed a near-record book deal for $8
million with Simon & Schuster. The memoir, “Living History,” became a bestseller.

By 2004,
the Clintons had paid off their debts, AP reported, and by 2009, the Clintons’
wealth was between $10 million and $50 million.

Even if
Bill Clinton hadn’t made a fortune in speeches, he still would have had a cushy
retirement after eight years in the top job. Between fiscal 2001 and this year,
Clinton has received $15.9 million in pensions and benefits, the CRS reported.

His
predecessor, former President George Herbert Walker Bush, has received about
$14 million in pension and benefits since fiscal 2000, and former President
George W. Bush has received about $7.1 million in pension benefits since he
left office in 2009, CRS reported.

Even Richard Nixon received full pension benefits, despite
resigning in disgrace during his second term. The Former Presidents Act didn’t
envision such a scenario but the Justice Department ruled that Nixon was
eligible for full benefits.

Hillary
Clinton didn’t mention the presidential pension in her poor-Hillary recitation.
To be sure, presidents earn their pensions. Nobody wants a former president to
be “dead broke,” and fortunately they aren’t.
For that, former presidents and their spouses can thank taxpayers.